YouTube is doing more to stop use of ad blockers and making people pay to watch ad-free videos but the recent changes weren't its fault.

What actually occurred when YouTube claims it did not decrease loading time for users with ad-blockers?

It was recently reported that YouTube was loading slowly if people were using ad blockers. Many of you were understandably upset by this platform’s strong push to get people to pay for its service.

However, a new report was released on Wednesday that says YouTube actually had nothing to do with the platform’s slowdown, and definitely nothing to do with the use of ad blockers. YouTube has commented on these claims and assured that its efforts to end the use of ad blockers are not yet very aggressive. The platform is quoted in a report here as saying that YouTube’s slowdown is unrelated to its ad-blocking features.

So if YouTube hasn’t made any changes to slow down the load time, what’s causing this problem? It turns out that the problem is caused by ad blockers, specifically AdBlock and AdBlock Plus tools.

The same report quotes a developer from another ad blocking platform, uBlock Origin, who pointed out that the problem was caused by a bug in AdBlock ad blockers. Raymond Hill shared information about a bug affecting AdBlock 5.17 and AdBlock Plus 3.22, which people use to block ads in their web browsers.

He also explained that the bug only caused problems for AdBlock tools and does not affect their own uBlock Origin ad blocker, meaning YouTube may be working as normal for these users. Ad blockers have been updated with a patch that should fix the slowdown for users.

YouTube claims that blocking ads limits its ability to pay content creators, so it wants people to stop using these tools and or simply pay for the Premium service, which offers ad-free content.

We’ve also seen that YouTube has a three-warning rule for videos, giving people enough time to stop using the ad blocker and show ads on all videos on their profile as long as they want to use YouTube for free. The message clearly stated that unless you whitelist YouTube from the ad blocker app/plugin or disable the feature entirely, the video will be blocked from playing.